Of Knowledge, Tears and Wishes
by Princess180
Summary: Three sad vignettes set the summer before seventh year at Grimmauld place. Not meant to have a plot or make a horrible amount of sense.


**AN: What, you might ask, possessed me to post this… I might reply that I don't know and smile. My first HP fic in a while and I might be slightly wonky on my cannon, so forgive me. Hope you like it. This is all, so… no fear that I'll never ever update again, right? **

_**Ginny **_

This, she has decided, is not a house for lovers. Perhaps it once had been- the sweeping staircase could have been somewhere to sweep down in an elegant robe she knows she'll never have. The window seats must number in the dozens, but in her experience, they aren't used for stolen moments- and God knows a moment here is always stolen- but for reading dull, dusty old books about prophesies.

She finds more and more of them are giving up. Turning in just a little bit earlier, up later.

_Neither can live while the other survives… _

Two lives, the most evil wizard in a thousand years, and a boy who's only fault in being born to the wrong people at the wrong time. She'd keep both if it meant she could save one, and the funny thing is, at night she wonders if it matters. Wonders if it matters if the man who tortured her and almost killed her when she was eleven lives, so long as the one who saved her does.

Except Ginny's not entirely sure he's a man just yet. She doesn't know quite what it is, the scared and haunted look in his eyes that he doesn't know they can all see or perhaps the way he flinches when you mention his parents or godfather. He's resigned to dying, and that is the act of a scared boy, not a man willing to overcome it.

Everyone here is resigned to dying, though, including her. She knows it's unlikely she'll live to see her seventeenth birthday and she _doesn't care_. Long ago she died a little bit, and perhaps, in the elsewhere, she'll get that bit back. Or join it. She wonders if he will, if he'll be eternally one and innocent, sweet. Wonders whether there is anything _beyond_ or if this is all she'll have.

They aren't thoughts for a sixteen-year-old girl. Her mother has told her a thousand times that she needn't fight, doesn't have too. And she's told her mother a thousand and one that she will. She knows how, of course, wishes she didn't sometimes, because she knows it will do her no good in the end.

Yes, Ginny is ready to die, but not to give up. She doesn't do it out of some maudlin sense of unrequited love, but only because she knows he deserves it. If he can pick up the pieces of a shattered life, he should, should have the chance. She doesn't wait for his love. In another time, another place, she could have loved him, believes with all her heart he could have loved her.

Knows, with the stinging sense that comes from reality, that he doesn't. Knows that he doesn't really love anyone, wonders if he can't. Wonders, oddly, if it's better that he can't anymore. His love is a curse. He's not the only one who sees it, though she'd never say it to his face. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if it hadn't been for one boy, her family could have lived out the rest of their lives in relative piece. And yet, she'll still die gladly for him.

It's the specter of the house, death. It hangs over some of them like a cloud, like Remus, who has killed now, who has lost everyone he ever cared for save Harry. Others ignore it, blissfully happy with the here and now, ideas beyond her comprehension. What does it matter that they are happy while the world tumbles around them? What does it matter if they are happy if those who never had a chance never will be.

She doesn't think she had a chance. At anything, really. Happiness, life, his love. She used to believe in soulmates, she remembers with a faint smile, believe that he was hers. She doesn't know now if she even believes in souls.

Sometimes, at school, she looks around her and wonders what she's missing out on. For the past year she's spent her time with the books, and prophesies, the Order. Then, she wonders whether they'll all become part of it eventually, it seems too large to not encompass everything and everyone. Yet, somehow, she knows that for them it is peripheral, news, maybe a cousin out there fighting. It's only a select few who wait with baited breath for the news, but can't tell the good from the bad anymore.

She can't. She remembers, faintly, an idea of right and wrong. It's the same way she remembers normalcy. Like mist, easy to see through, faulty. This is the only knowledge that scares her any more. She will die, and she knows it. If they don't win, thousands more will follow her, and she can only find it in her to wait. But the realization that she doesn't remember any more scares her, and she knows she is no child.

The same way she knows this isn't a place for lovers, and she isn't one herself. And she realizes, without a blink, that she couldn't care less.

Neither can live while the other survives… **Ron**

It's bizarre the things that come to you in the early morning. Ron firmly believes that all great ideas have been thought of by insomniacs pacing the length of their rooms at night. It's what he does. And he's just realized that they might not win.

The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… 

It seems like it's been longer than it has since Ron became a hero. It's been minutes since he realized he could lose. Yet- he knows he shouldn't. It's stupid and childish, he hears her voice whisper it in his ear in the haunting tones it has taken in the past months.

Only two, he realizes with a start. Two months since she whispered her last confession in his ear and left him. Only two months since he stopped wondering and started mourning. Ron feels the familiar prickling at the back of his eyes and blames it on the dustiness of the room. He won't cry. He repeats it like the mantra it is, it doesn't work.

The sobs are almost a familiar sound, and he knows they echo in the huge halls of the old house like they never did in his own home. He also knows that they'll mingle with a few others soon enough, and in the morning he can claim to have slept well. No one will question him, as always. He wonders when tears stopped being an anomaly.

He cries, detached from the emotions, and without knowing why. He refuses to believe she's really gone, in his own little ways. Does his schoolwork for fear she'll yell, straightens his shirt collars for the same reason. The others, he knows, are used to it now. Harry looks just that much worse, but perhaps that's not her, after all, a thousand other things have happened. But, to him, it seems wrong and for the first time in two years, he longs for home. Longs without rhyme or reason, like he cries.

This isn't home, no matter how hard they try. Just a place to rest his head when he has to. And that's rare. Ron has forgotten how to dream, he thinks, or his dreams are too horrible for memory. Funny, he used to think- until just five minutes ago- he could be normal after this. And now with this new revelation he knows it will never be normal.

He wonders who this is worse for, Harry who has his fate and can't change it no matter how hard he fight, or him, who has to make his own. Somewhere, in the back of his head, he wonders if she was his fate. If he should have gone down with her. Ron laughs, almost giddily, before the tears start again.

He lies down, back perfectly flat, long arms at his sides, and allows himself to whisper her name. Hear it just once more.

"_Hermione_."

It sounds like a curse.

Harry 

It puzzles him that he could be alone and not care. He used to be afraid of… things. Harry doesn't quite remember what anymore. The dark, perhaps. He's become whimsical in his madness.

Harry is quite convinced he's insane.

The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal… 

He's also quite convinced he's alone, very, very alone. And, he still doesn't care. Harry finds it hard to care about anything that isn't… _it_. Another of the helpful euphemisms that stroll the halls of this rotting place. They can say _his_ name, but hardly anything else. _Prophecy _is a curse word. _Hermione_ is forbidden. _Death_ only thought of.

And, oh, does he think about it. He wonders with his destiny, if he could do it. Harry thinks that if he knew he could, he wouldn't. He doesn't like doing things that are possible. He seeks out the impossible. Harry has wondered the past year how much of his personality comes from _him_, how much comes from _it_ and how much is genuinely him. He knows there is no answer.

Harry barely notices the things that can't be answered any more. He barely notices anything. He remembers, with something faintly akin to humor, a childhood proverb: Hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil. He wonders where he heard it, no one would have taken the time in his childhood to drill such warm, fuzzy worldviews into his head, and it hardly seems the sort of thing anyone would have said to his cousin. Actually, he never eavesdropped on those conversations, they were almost unforgivably dull.

Harry died a bit inside every time he realized no one cared to bore him. Now it seems to hopelessly insignificant, and he wonders when his problems became so much bigger than that. Wishes fervently that they hadn't.

Thinks he's the only one here who can wish anymore. Doubts it and knows he's right. Wishes he wasn't.

All his thoughts are like this now, quick and short, hardly full sentences, it's yet another thing that leads him to believe he's insane. Or perhaps that he is past his expiration date, should have died years ago. Can't hold on to whatever simulation of life he's been living.

Harry continuously looks for a time when everything was 'alright' and can't quite seem to come upon it, though he's sure he remembers it. There is a sense of rightness that some moments have that he wants to jump up and grab but knows he couldn't touch, wishes fervently he could. Harry has so many wishes.

Yet another overheard platitude: 'if wishes were fishes…' Harry, personally, never liked fish. Though now, he doubts he'd mind, he can barely taste food, and when he eats it's because he's told to. His days only work when strictly regimented. Though, they don't work that way either. After all, he can't control _him_.

Harry remembers a time when events and people were more frightening than words. No longer.

_The Dark Lord will mark him as his equal… _

Harry wishes he could speak.


End file.
